‘Hans-Martien ten Napel of Leiden University delivers an address entitled “Constitutionalism, Democracy, and Religious Freedom: To Be Fully Human” at the Acton Institute’s “Reclaiming the West: Public Spirit and Public Virtue” conference in Washington, D.C. The conference took place on December 6, 2017.’

Posted onDecember 2, 2017|Comments Off on Press Release: ‘Hans-Martien ten Napel to speak at conference on “Public Spirit and Public Virtue” in Washington, DC’

‘On December 6, 2017, Hans-Martien ten Napel will be speaking during a conference on “Public Spirit and Public Virtue,” in Washington, DC.

The conference aims to “examine the ways in which the Western world might see a revival of public spirit through public virtue and remain a civilization marked by ‘order and public tranquility’ that only this spirit and virtue can provide.”

Among the other speakers during the conference are:

John Wilsey, Associate Professor of History at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and currently serving as the William G. Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University;

The conference, which forms part of an International Conference series on “Reclaiming the West: Freedom and Responsibility,” is organized by the Acton Institute. The Acton Institute, named after the English historian Lord John Acton (1834-1902), “is a think-tank whose mission is to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles.”

Co-sponsors of the event are the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture, the Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

‘In an increasingly globalized and pluralized world it becomes progressively more difficult to define the public virtues that have delineated the West, and as a result, harder to safe-guard the freedoms—economic, political, and religious—which are the fruits of those virtues. A citizen who possesses “town spirit,” according to Alexis de Tocqueville, is one who “focuses his affections and his hopes on the town, who knows how to take his place there and to participate in its governance.” This spirit is the result of the visible presence of public virtue—“a free and strong corporate body…which merits the trouble of trying to direct it.” This one-day conference will examine the ways in which the Western world might see a revival of public spirit through public virtue and remain a civilization marked by “order and public tranquility” that only this spirit and virtue can provide.’

On the International Conference series ‘Reclaiming the West: Freedom and Responsibility’, of which this conference forms a part:

‘The West today is in a state of crisis. Facing immense domestic economic and political problems, North America, Europe, and other Western nations are also struggling to address existential threats from without. But above all, the West appears to suffering from a crisis of self-belief: one which touches centrally upon its attachment to the tradition of ordered liberty in politics, freedom in the economy, strong civil societies, commitment to virtue, as well as the unique synthesis of faith and reason that is at the root of Western civilization.

To explore these questions concerning the Western tradition of human liberty and responsibility and its Judeo-Christian culture, the Acton Institute is holding three international conferences which will bring together theologians, economists, political thinkers, philosophers, religious figures, business leaders, foreign policy thinkers, journalists, historians, and legal scholars from both sides of the Atlantic. Among other topics, they will discuss the origin and character of the West’s many problems, consider how these matters might be addressed in ways that draw upon the West’s unique heritage, and examine how Europe and North America can contribute to each other’s revival.’

‘On both sides of the Atlantic, courts this week have addressed the relationship of Islam to the west, but with radically different approaches and outcomes. In the US, federal courts in Hawaii and Maryland have halted Donald Trump’s second attempt at a Muslim ban. Meanwhile, the European court of justice, Europe’s highest court, has upheld the right of private employers to ban Muslim women from wearing headscarves.

American and European law each embrace principles of religious neutrality and non-discrimination, but the divergent application of those laws reflects different levels of discomfort with religion generally and a demographic anxiety with Islam in particular.’

Muneer I Ahmad is Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School and co-director of the Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, which was co-counsel on the first case to challenge the original Muslim Ban.

My forthcoming book on Constitutionalism, Democracy and Religious Freedom. To Be Fully Human (Routledge) is comparative, among other things, in the sense that it sometimes points towards differences and similarities between Europe and North America, be it not in a systematic manner. As such, it notes that in Europe respect for the fundamental right of freedom of religion or belief appears to have been eroding for quite some time, certainly in some of the courts.

In a preview of The Public Square, forthcoming in the March issue of First Things, editor R.R. Reno refers to an argument by Sherman Jackson. Dr. Jackson is the King Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought and Culture, and Professor of Religion and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California (USC).

‘In his 2005 book, Islam and the Blackamerican, ­Jackson makes a case for Muslim endorsement of the American political system and its “liberal-pluralist vision.” (…) Needless to say, Islam is opposed to liberal pluralism as obligatory cultural ideal—as are orthodox Christianity and Judaism. But liberal pluralism can refer to something more modest, a political system and civic tradition that recognize the limits of law and accord room for dissent and deviance. (…)

Sherman Jackson is an influential voice in the Muslim American community, and his endorsement of liberal-­pluralist constitutionalism resists Islamic extremism that poses as religious integrity and helps Muslims in the United States to affirm our way of life, which their natural sympathies incline them to do. Which is why I do not regard Islam as a “problem” in the United States.’

My forthcoming book points to liberal pluralism as a plausible model to manage diversity in a postsecular society. It also raises the question in this context, if and to what extent Christian pluralist theory differs from liberal pluralism in a practical sense, although differences remain at the theoretical level. What is more, although grounded at least in part in Christian theology, liberal pluralism is in a sense also remarkably similar to constitutional lawyer Asifa Quraishi-Landes’s account of Islamic constitutionalism inspired by classical, premodern, Islamic regimes.

This is the seventh post in a new series introducing my forthcoming book on Constitutionalism, Democracy and Religious Freedom. To be Fully Human (Routledge, 2017).

Posted onFebruary 18, 2017|Comments Off on Michael Wear’s Reclaiming Hope (2017): ‘Learn How the Seeds of the Trump Presidency Were Sown in the Obama White House’

‘In this unvarnished account of faith inside the world’s most powerful office, Michael Wear provides unprecedented insight into the highs and lows of working as a Christian in government. Reclaiming Hope is an insider’s view of the most controversial episodes of the Obama administration, from the president’s change of position on gay marriage and the transformation of religious freedom into a partisan idea, to the administration’s failure to find common ground on abortion and the bitter controversy over who would give the benediction at the 2012 inauguration.’

The thing that without doubt has struck me most during my fellowship is how relatively fast and comprehensively the right to freedom of religion or belief has indeed already come under pressure across the West, at least in theory. It is difficult to give a single and clear-cut explanation for this. One important factor is without doubt the political polarisation that has come to be associated with religious freedom. Thus, Democrats blame Republicans for claiming a near-monopoly with respect to the right to freedom of religion or belief, thereby interpreting it in a conservative manner when it comes to topics such as same-sex marriage. On their part, as they themselves would be the first to admit, the Obama administration has not always dealt in a sensitive manner with issues regarding the inclusion of abortion and anticonception in the healthcare legislation it has introduced.

This is the sixth post in a new series introducing my forthcoming book on Constitutionalism, Democracy and Religious Freedom. To be Fully Human (Routledge, 2017).

Posted onMarch 10, 2016|Comments Off on Upcoming Speaking Engagement: The Cardiff Festival of Law and Religion 2016

‘Registration is now open for the Cardiff Festival of Law and Religion on May 5th and 6th at Cardiff University. This celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the LLM in Canon Law at Cardiff University, the first degree of its type in a British University since the Reformation.

A number of events are being held to reflect upon how the study of Law and Religion has developed over the last twenty-five years and the likely future trajectory. This includes the 2016 Law and Religion Scholars Network (LARSN) Conference, a keynote address by Professor David Little, a celebratory dinner and the launch of F Cranmer, M Hill, C Kenny and R Sandberg (ed) The Confluence of Law and Religion: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Work of Norman Doe (Cambridge University Press, 2016).’

The paper I will be presenting is entitled: ‘The “New Critics of Religious Freedom” and the Inspiration they Unintentionally Provide’:

The ‘New Critics of Religious Freedom’ have become increasingly vocal of late. The first part of the proposed paper will summarise their main criticisms, some of which contain a considerable amount of truth, such as that the right to freedom of religion or belief has historically been heavily influenced by Christianity in general and Protestantism in particular.

The second part of the paper will argue that at first sight there also appears to be one major downside to the criticisms. As it turns out to be hardly possible to isolate the right to freedom of religion or belief from the general idea of a democratic constitutional state, what the critics are really questioning is the current state of Western liberal democracy as a whole.

The third part of the paper will propose that the reason for this close connection between religious freedom and the democratic constitutional state lies in the fact that the latter has clearly been influenced by Christianity as well. Still, the new critics of religious freedom may on closer inspection also serve as a source of inspiration for a necessary, theologically driven reform of the central tenets of liberal democracy as it has developed in recent decades.

About me

Hans-Martien ten Napel, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he is also Research Fellow of the Leiden Law School and Affiliated Member of the Center for the Study of Political Parties and Representation. In addition, he is a Member of the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research. Before his transfer to the law faculty, he taught at a Department of Political Science and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA).

He teaches the Bachelor of Laws elective course on the Law of Democracy and a Master of Laws elective course on Comparative Constitutional Law and served as a coach on the extracurricular Leiden Leadership Programme. In addition, he is currently co-supervising three Ph.D. projects.

In 2014 he was awarded a Research Fellowship in Legal Studies at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, NJ, which enabled him to be in full-time residence at CTI for the academic year 2014-2015. In 2017 he received a ‘seed money grant for frontier research’ from the Leiden profile area Interaction Between Legal Systems.

His work has appeared in European Constitutional Law Review, European Public Law, Journal of Interreligious Studies, Journal of Markets and Morality, Muslim World Journal of Human Rights and Oxford Journal of Law and Religion. He was also co-editor and co-author of two recent volumes, Regulating Political Parties: European Democracies in Comparative Perspective (2014) and The Powers That Be. Rethinking the Separation of Powers (2015).

Since 2015, he is a member of the editorial board of the Tijdschrift voor Religie, Recht en Beleid(Journal of Religion, Law, and Policy). In 2017, he published, as the fruit of his research fellowship, the monograph Constitutionalism, Democracy and Religious Freedom. To Be Fully Human (Routledge).

Grateful to Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies, the Founder and Senior Director of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance (IRFA), for generously including my recent book on Constitutionalism, Democracy and Religious Freedom, To Be Fully Human in this review of recent books on … Continue reading →

Pleased to announce that the editorial board of Routledge have decided to publish my book Constitutionalism, Democracy and Religious Freedom. To Be Fully Human (2017) in paperback. They anticipate publication in March 2019. Preview PDF here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781317236917?fbclid=IwAR0aiJiTnvOvWAv57HCS1vkwLAiNNTp1BU96knPp-GC4MGxh5P6DB82JzWw A Media Review … Continue reading →

I look forward to participating in the third session of the St. John’s Law School Center for Law and Religion’s Tradition Project, “The Value of Tradition in the Global Context,” in Rome this week. ‘December 12, 2018 9.00 – 13.00 … Continue reading →

‘Champaign, Ill., USA – 16 November 2018 – The Religion in Society Research Network is pleased to announce the selection of “The Significance of Communal Religious Freedom for Liberal Democracy,” Hans-Martien ten Napel, as the winner of the International Award … Continue reading →